Last time I checked, I had 6 laptops at home – 2 HPs, 2 Sony Vaios, 1 Dell and 1 Mac. They were acquired in that order too. And my Mac recently conked when my 3 year old decided it was a good idea to feed his leftover milk to the “silver computer”. The keys seemed to be making a decent recovery before I ultimately realized that even after the 72 hour rice bag wait, it was gone forever. I secretly congratulated myself for continuing to working out of a USB drive after the last time something similar happened. At least that meant my work was intact. For now.

Even still, this posed multiple problems for various reasons, most of all my new “jobs” as a freelance writer. Adept as I am at typing on the iPhone and iPad, I would much rather have a full sized keyboard with better editing abilities than those. And suddenly my husband (who works for Apple) suggested I use a wireless keyboard to interface with my iPad through Bluetooth and create cloud documents using apps on the iPad. This seemed preposterous at first. But even as I’m typing right now, I like it.

Here are some obvious (and hidden) reasons I love this technology –

  1. iPads have no start-up time or at best minimal times to “boot”. There are no virus checks and other hindrances to delay your work.
  2. They’re always connected and the speed of browsing doesn’t seem to be affected by the number of processes, devices, etc.
  3. The keyboard connects seamlessly to the iPad via Bluetooth and I’m at
    liberty to place the iPad on a stand and keep the keyboard on a desk or my lap etc.
  4. Everything is self-backed up and is on the cloud. So no matter where I type, it’s all saved and available for access from any computer with Internet access in the world.
  5. I can at moment’s notice without any hassle or power cords take this and flee from my destructive toddler. It’s super portable and gives me the flexibility of working from just about anywhere there’s wi-fi (only for uploads/downloads). This is similar to an ultra portable laptop, I admit but I can also shove the keyboard inside and do something else at a moment’s notice.
  6. There are apps now for everything. And seriously, this is the beauty of the evolving technologies.

And the shortcomings –

  1. It gets some getting used to. Just like we never imagined touch screen mobile phones conquering the market, this technology will soon be omnipresent too.
  2. You’ll need additional apps for modifying different styles of documents (spreadsheets, presentations, etc.)

But the future is promising for these technologies and new apps are evolving everyday. And that just means, it’s time for us to evolve too and get used to new things.